There have been other sales on the new Paperwhite before, but today’s deal — which starts at $89.99 for the cheapest, 8GB model with Wi-Fi and Amazon’s advertisements — is the cheapest yet. All the models of the new Paperwhite are on sale, although options like the upgraded 32GB storage, cellular connectivity, and removing Amazon’s “Special Offers” ads will obviously bump that price up.

But no matter which model you’re interested, it’s hard to turn down a straight $40 off the usual price…

Fox News has barred a TV monitoring service from recording its broadcasts and allowing customers to search for and play back relevant segments. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the monitoring service TVEyes reached a settlement with Fox after a five-year-long legal battle requiring it to permanently stop distributing the network’s shows. TVEyes hasn’t been distributing Fox since March, after receiving an injunction.

TVEyes may not be well known, but it and similar companies perform an important service: allowing journalists to keep tabs on the dozens of hours of content broadcast on news channels each day. That’s particularly important when it comes to Fox News — a channel known for scare tactics, slanted coverage, and being watched…

France’s data protection regulator, CNIL, has issued Google a €50 million fine (around $56.8 million USD) for failing to comply with its GDPR obligations. This is the biggest GDPR fine yet to be issued by a European regulator and the first time one of the tech giants has been found to fall foul of the tough new regulations that came into force in May last year.

CNIL said that the fine was issued because Google failed to provide enough information to users about its data consent policies and didn’t give them enough control over how their information is used. According to the regulator, these violations are yet to have been rectified by the search giant. Under GDPR, companies are required to gain the user’s “genuine consent” before…

WhatsApp will now limit users to forwarding a message only five times, in an attempt to cut down on the spread of misinformation. According to Reuters, the five time forwarding limit is being implemented across the world starting today.

While fake stories and deceitful groups on Facebook have been the focus in the US, misinformation on WhatsApp has become a problem elsewhere in the world. In Brazil, it became a particularly big issue ahead of the country’s presidential elections in October, as bad voting information, conspiracy theories, and false stories about candidates spread across the network. One study of the most widely shared images in Brazilian political group chats found that more than half of the top 50 images were misleading,…

]]>Abode is bringing HomeKit to its do-it-all smart home hubhttp://allcom.se/2019/01/21/abode-is-bringing-homekit-to-its-do-it-all-smart-home-hub/
Mon, 21 Jan 2019 15:15:22 +0000http://allcom.se/2019/01/21/abode-is-bringing-homekit-to-its-do-it-all-smart-home-hub/Abode, not to be confused with Adobe, is today taking the wraps off its new second generation smart home gateway. The Gen 2 device acts as a central hub between all your Z-Wave Plus, Zigbee, and abodeRF devices, and is compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Nest, ecobee, LifX, Philips Hue, and IFTTT. Moreover, it will “soon” support HomeKit and Siri which is an out-of-the-box rarity for these do-it-all gateways.

On paper then, this is the smart home hub you’d buy if you’re trying to remain as flexible as possible without ecosystem lock-in. HomeKit integration will be delivered via a future firmware update to both Gen 1 and Gen 2 gateways.

John Scalzi is a familiar name to most science fiction readers. He’s best known for his long-running blog Whatever as well as books like Old Man’s War, Redshirts, The Collapsing Empire, and, most recently, The Consuming Fire. In “A Model Dog,” Scalzi looks at what first appears to be one tech billionaire’s frivolous project that turns into a heartbreaking effort to preserve the memory of a cherished family pet.

The Verge spoke with Scalzi about his story, the implications of big data, and remembering our favorite pets.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

What was your initial inspiration for the story?

Well, I think part of it is that I was thinking about the whole concept of machine learning and the idea that AI is…

The drone manufacturer DJI has discovered millions of dollars worth of fraud committed by its employees, the company has announced (via Bloomberg). The company has said it expects the losses from the fraud to amount to around 1 billion yuan (around $150 million USD) and that “a number” of its employees have been fired over the discovery. The Financial Times reports that this number could be as high as 29 employees.

In a statement sent to Engadget, the company said that some of its 14,000 employees had been inflating the cost of parts and materials for financial gain. In response, along with dismissing a number of employees, DJI said that it has alerted law enforcement, and has also set up new internal channels for whistleblowers to…

GoFundMe has set up a campaign to help federal workers affected by the longest government shutdown in US history, and it’s raised over $90,000 from over 1,000 people in just two days. The fund, which was announced by GoFundMe’s CEO Rob Solomon, was started with an initial donation of $10,000 from New Age guru Deepak Chopra, which was then matched with a donation from GoFundMe itself.

Donations towards the fundraiser will be distributed to a number of different nonprofit organisations working to help the approximately 800,000 workers affected by the shutdown. The World Central Kitchen in Washington DC, which is currently providing free meals to federal workers, is one such organization, and the National Diaper Bank Network is another.

Amazon has more than 100,000 robots in its warehouses, and so, naturally, needs to ensure that the machines play nice with human employees. The company’s latest solution to keep robo-human relations ticking over smoothly is what it calls the “Robotic Tech Vest” — a bit of kit that warehouse workers can wear to make them visible to nearby machines.

As reported by TechCrunch, the Robotic Tech Vest (really more of a belt-and-suspenders combo, judging by the picture above) is a neat upgrade to existing safety systems.

Usually, Amazon’s robots tote shelves of goods around in a cordoned-off area where they can’t run into employees. If a robot breaks down or drops any items a human has to enter that area to put things right. “In the past,…